Personal Narrative: High School's Volleyball Team

Senior year is known to be the best year of high school. It's your final year, you're at the top of the social food chain, and for me, my last year of volleyball. Varsity volleyball season starts the first Monday of August, starting a month before school. The team goes to a tournament in Houston, Texas every year and it is always the best weekend of the season. The four days are full of bonding, long bus rides, hotel room talks, and free food. Making varsity for the first time, this is what you look forward to the most. The trip was going amazing, and we blew everyone out of the water on the first day, winning all of our games. That night we had a curfew of 10, a few minutes before lights out, the coaches did room checks to see if we were in bed. Ours went fine, others, however, did not. The coaches walked in on six team members, three electronic cigarettes, and one cloudy room. The girls, four of the six essential to the team, had been sitting in a circle part curfew passing the electronic cigarettes around. The legal age for owning and using an e-cig is eighteen, and none of them were of age. In fact, the youngest was only 15. The girls in the room were all who I spent time with on the team, and I had no idea what was going to happen without them. They were the "leaders" of the team, and

As a leader it is important to follow the motto service above self. My favorite activity / event of the 2016-2017 Rodriguez Prep school year was being on the school’s volleyball team. The experience of being on the school’s volleyball team impacted me personally.

While proud of what I was able to do to give back my community, my only regret is that I was not able to assist in a couple of areas. The most regrettable instance of this is Franklin Township’s Varsity Football. While we did leave behind some important moral codes behind that has already begun to sow the seeds necessary for success, we could not bring back the winning culture Franklin Football had in the past. Looking ahead, I now know the tools necessary to being successful and will work to be a greater influence in order to aid towards that success. Additionally, I’d like to be a more vocal person. Waiting until the middle of Junior Year to take a leadership role was a poor choice, as that was not enough time to turn an entire program around.

I have never been a sporty person, but there is one sport that has always intrigued me and that is volleyball. Since sixth grade I have been a part of CIPLC's Volleyball team, attending most VANASs & CEVACs of middle school and high school. However, before middle school I participated in the roller hockey and the basketball club. In addition, I joined the Chess Club and went to the Chess CEVAC on May, 16 2013 in the international school in Anaco, and in 2015 signed up for MUN and then attended SAMUN in Caracas in November.

As a child, I attended the Gibson Southern Volleyball Camp every summer, and I absolutely loved it. It was at that moment, at my first camp, I knew I had found my thing. I started out playing volleyball at Haubstadt Community School and I played all throughout middle school, and I loved it. I loved it so much that I decided to tryout for the Gibson Southern Volleyball Team and I was a nervous wreck. I went from believing I wasn’t going to make it to being the only girl from Haubstadt to make the JV team and I even made the team over some upperclassmen. I was ecstatic at first, but then I quickly realized that all of my friends made the team below me, the C team, and I didn’t have anyone on my team. Fortunately, that quickly changed. Volleyball brought me many friendships that I wouldn’t change for the world.

Volleyball has been a large part of my life the past five years as I've played on Greenwood High School's Team. My transition from elementary school to middle involved joining the high school volleyball team, along with two other to-be seventh graders. These past few years have been marked with both struggle and triumph as we experienced three different coaches as the original coach stepped down. This left us with only 14 girls to play with one year, when an average volleyball team plays with 30 girls. We struggled as a team that year but we also came closer together through shared experience, which enabled us to work together even better as a team the year after under the tutelage of our third coach. My ninth grade year I participated very heavily on the team as I played both Freshman and

It was my junior year and football season was over. We had won the state championship. It was time to relax and enjoy basketball season. Basketball season was always a fun time. I was a grade younger than most of my friends who were on the team. I was always the kid that was brought up to sit on the bench or be the sixth man. I never really got too much playing time, however, sometimes if there was a big man on the other team, or some sort of foul trouble for one of the seniors, I would get in. I had been playing with these same kids since the 6th grade. My role on the team had been the same all the way up to this point. That was ok with me. What I really enjoyed though were all the trips and tournaments and just hanging

“Why would I have to go to bed early for something that wouldn’t need that sort of procedure!”, I nearly screamed at my parents. If you couldn’t tell already, I was really steaming up.

“The challenge of leadership is to be strong, but not rude; be kind, but not weak; be bold, but not bully; be thoughtful, but not lazy; be humble, but not timid; be proud, not arrogant, have humor, but without folly.” Implementing leadership is not hard with a good leader, who conveys the qualities of mental strength, self-motivation, and confidence. As head cheerleader, I will be able to exhibit these qualities while implementing a structured leadership program with some of the three major factors in leading a successful team: communication, bonding, and organization.

The camera sprang to life. Cantilevered out on its metal arm, the camera, the culmination of weeks of work on top of years of experience, began filming its first game.

My 6th grade team has been extremely helpful with students who have behavior issues and with discipline. We would have a meeting each six weeks (I feel the meetings should happen more often) to discuss students who were doing often and need recognition and the students who were struggling with their behavior. If any of us had any strategies on how to help the student(s) we would share with each other. Through out the six weeks if one of us felt we needed to have a parent teacher conference, we would check with everyone else to see what time everyone was available and would set it up as long as it worked for the parent(s). If someone felt that a student needed to be referred for a Care team meeting, they would get everyone’s input and then proceed.

I had played since I was in fourth grade and I liked to consider myself mediocre at the least. After about thirty minutes of playing we all decided to start a tournament; two on two. Alex and I decided to be on a team, and there were about six other teams of two that joined in the tournament. With my basketball background and compared to the other teams, I knew Alex and I definitely had a substantial advantage in the endeavor. As I suspected, we won the tournament without much of a hassle, although when we finished, we had been breathing hard, so the sense of accomplish was still prevalent. Little did I know; that cold October night would be the last time I was able to play basketball for seven elongated

Ever since i was little me and sisters played volleyball all year around. We started playing when we were 5 years old. If we had a volleyball we would play anywhere there was space. We played in my moms office, in the living room, and in the car. Playing alongside of my sister made us both realize this was the sport we were born to play. Everytime we traveled to see each other play we would always watch the other teams warm up we would see who had the hardest serve, the best passer, and if there were any lefties.

There for my very first set, spike and block was my volleyball team at Island Coast High School . I may have came to the sport late in my years, but I was still accepted with open arms. With having the least amount of experience, I was the most dependent on my team. A team that soon turned into a second family. By mid season it became more than just people I play with but instead the people I could dependent on the most. While  no longer there I can call on them at

Almost everything we do in this life is a risk but I would like to focus on a risk I took In high school. All through my early teens, until I graduated from High school, I played basketball. I never was very good at this sport in my earlier years, and looking back I have decided that it was a risk trying to become proficient at the sport and wasting all the time that goes into practice.